September 16, 2005

September 16, 2005

Stony Plain to Folding Mountain, Alberta

YEAR 2 DAY 91

 

Today started out cloudy and cold, but became sunny and warm by afternoon.

This morning after showering, breakfast, morning chores, and preventive maintenance, I took the truck to Competition Chevrolet, the GM dealer near the campground. I discovered to my great dismay that the starter installed last September in South Beloit, Illinois has a lifetime parts warranty only in the U.S.! In Canada the warranty is 12 months. The starter was replaced 12 months and 9 days ago. They were going to phone their area GM dealer's representative, and see if something could be done. I walked back to the campground. At noon they called to say the truck was ready, and that they had spoken to the area GM dealer's rep in Edmonton, and the regional GM dealer's rep in Calgary, both of whom declined to honour the parts warranty. I was livid, not with the local GM dealer, but with GM. I walked back to the dealer, paid the $700 repair bill, and returned to the campground. I then spent over 2 hours making many phone calls back and forth between GM Canada, GM in the U.S., and the GM dealer in Illinois. What a lot of buck passing. It took an immense amount of persistence, and assertiveness, to finally get a manager in the LSG ( Lifetime Service Guarantee ) division of GM in the U.S. to very reluctantly agree to reimburse me for the cost of the part, but not the labour. And that reluctant agreement of his was predicated on GM being able to issue me a reimbursement cheque in U.S. dollars, mailed to a U.S. address. They "are unable" to phone a Canadian phone number, issue a refund in Canadian dollars ( fair enough ! ) or mail to a Canadian address ! ! ! I provided them an address of General Delivery, Chimacum, Washington, where we will be in early November. Now all I have to do is write them a letter, and enclose the invoice from the work done today, the work done a year ago in Illinois, proof of ownership of the truck, and proof of payment by credit card of today's invoice. Fine ! But I'm not finished with GM Canada yet ! ! ! Nor am I finished with the GM dealer in Illinois !

By the time we had lunch, and prepared for departure, it was 3:00 P.M.. I drove back to the GM dealer to pick up a copy of today's invoice, we refilled a propane tank, then bought some groceries at Safeway. By the time we were leaving Stony Plain it was 4:00 P.M..

We headed west on Yellowhead Hwy. 16. Between Stony Plain and Edson, as a truck passed us a large rock flew up and hit the windshield. It smashed the windshield producing a starburst stone chip about the size of a quarter, with cracks radiating out a couple of inches in all directions < sigh >. At Edson we stopped to fill with diesel, and adjust the air pressure in all six truck tires. The change in altitude, and temperature, made that necessary. We continued west on Yellowhead Hwy. 16, debating where we should stop for the night. We finally decided to stop at Folding Mountain RV Resort, west of Hinton, just outside the east gate of Jasper National Park.

We have just entered the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The leaves are changing colour. We are camped at the base of Folding Mountain, in a lovely, wooded campground, with atrocious power. The line voltage monitor in the trailer registers voltage below its lower limit, which is 100 volts. I've switched the fridge to propane, the water heater to propane, turned off the electric heater, turned on the propane furnace, and am running the laptop on battery. I've read a lot of RV magazine articles about campgrounds with low voltage or high voltage problems, and the horror stories of damaged fridge electronics, damaged computers, etc.. We've never encountered this sort of power problem in a campground before, but apparently it's common. Joanne is baking while I work on this journal entry. All that's left for me to do is today's accounting.

DSK